Although pickiness fundamentally concerns one’s preferences, there is currently no definition of this construct in the consumer psychology literature. This paper presents a conceptualization of shopper “pickiness”—an overly narrow latitude of acceptance around an idiosyncratic ideal point. Pickiness is revealed in two ways: pickiness by acceptance (PBA) (i.e., choosing to accept few options) and pickiness by rejection (PBR) (i.e., choosing to reject many options). This work introduces the Picky Shopper Scale to assess relative degrees of pickiness among individuals, show how pickiness is related to other individual-difference variables, and articulate how pickiness differs from maximizing. Picky shoppers consider both horizontal (taste-based) and vertical (quality-based) product attributes as important in product evaluation, while maximizers primarily prioritize vertical product attributes. A field test reveals that those who score higher on the Picky Shopper Scale (but not on a Maximizer scale) more frequently reject a free gift that comes with a subjectively undesirable horizontal attribute than those who score lower. Downstream implications of pickiness are discussed.

中文翻译：

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识别挑剔的购物者：他们是谁以及如何发现他们

尽管挑剔从根本上与个人喜好有关，但目前在消费者心理学文献中没有对这种结构的定义。本文提出了购物者“挑剔”的概念——一种围绕特殊理想点的过于狭窄的接受范围。挑剔有两种表现方式：接受挑剔（PBA）（即选择接受很少的选项）和拒绝挑剔（PBR）（即选择拒绝很多选项）。这项工作引入了挑剔购物者量表来评估个人之间挑剔的相对程度，展示挑剔与其他个体差异变量的关系，并阐明挑剔与最大化的区别。挑剔的购物者认为横向（基于口味）和纵向（基于质量）的产品属性在产品评估中都很重要，而最大化者主要优先考虑垂直产品属性。现场测试显示，在挑剔购物者量表（但不是在最大化量表上）得分较高的人比得分较低的人更频繁地拒绝带有主观上不受欢迎的横向属性的免费礼物。讨论了挑剔的下游影响。